My out-of-body guide, Archangel Diva Deluxe tapped me three times with her magical wand of LGBTQ truth and saving grace circumstance on my D&G-designed choir robe. It was coupled with my leased-for-10-minutes, no-charge angel wings. For the next 120 seconds of free-floating afterlife reverie, my life history flashes before me.
It seems unbelievable. Many moments I had long forgotten like crushes, anxieties, repentances, name callings, embarrassments, arguments, shames, glimpses as a Southern Baptist, altar calls and teenage explorations pass by. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
And, seemingly at long last, a life-changing decision to be who I am: gay — eventually proudly so.
"To hell with pretense," I see and hear myself declare in a dramatic Academy Award flashback.
"OK. Mary," said Archangel Diva Deluxe. "I think you get the general idea of what it's all about for you. Take it from me, someone who's been there, done that and still made it big time, so to speak. Had you not made the decision to be who you really are, more than likely you'd have wound up as one more blue-eyed, no-pension missionary in inland China."
My final moments of this out-of-body experience concluded with a glimpse of what my long-ago decision to be who I am keeps me from being admitted to.
Namely … fellowship with Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, Billy Graham, Donald Trump, Michael Richard Pence, a host of tax-free televangelists, a blue-eyed Jesus and assorted Jehovah's Witnesses. Also, Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Southern and American Baptists, Independent Methodists and Christadelphians. All of them are arguing with each other for time and eternity as to who gets to sit at the right hand of Creator, God-the-Father … without the celestial intercession of the BVM.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that our out-of-body experiences are but one more of the mind's creative fictions to amuse and amaze us during our daily waking moments. Yet, I wonder ….
For what it's worth, I awoke from my afterlife adventure only to find my room filled with the light scent of cleansing patchouli. And, from out of nowhere, what seemed to be the voice of the Archangel Diva Deluxe reminding, "It's never too late to get a life, Mary! For Heaven's sake, or otherwise."
Footnote: Following recent BTL publication of Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, several big-time book publishers called me with contractual offers. Modestly, I said that as a renegade ecumenical moral standards commentator, with far-reaching readership privilege, I was somewhat tempted. Somewhat.
I gave assurance to all interested publishing parties I would pray about it, if the proffered price from each is right, and an accompanying flyleaf photo of me with a 32-inch waist attests to the otherworld sincerity of my 10 minutes in Heaven occasioned by a Michigan Snyder-neglected, pothole repair misadventure.
I invite all sincere PG true believers to join me in like supplication, (although I cannot guarantee financial reimbursement to any or to all — saint or sinner alike — for such efforts). My beyond-belief experience continues. With four Trump/Pence-free heavenly minutes remaining ….
